When I was a little girl, I pored over my parents’ wedding pictures. Mum and Dad were married in 1969 in an old Toronto church. They were married in Advent, and my mother carried red poinsettias as her wedding bouquet. Her simple white gown, which she and her mother made, was trimmed with rabbit fur.
There are only a few photos, for my uncle’s camera did not work well indoors. I didn’t mind; the candid snaps of my young and handsome parents on the church steps are more vibrant than any posed tableau could be. The bride and groom laugh and duck as they are showered with rice. My father puts on his hat (for it was 1969), and my mother, wearing a pale blue cape, gets into his white Volkswagen Beetle. That day my mother must have been the most beautiful woman in Canada. I have the pictures to prove it.
Almost 40 years later, I sat in the same old Toronto church and prepared for a wedding. It was not my own, which is a little sad for I suspect my mother has a secret hankering that I should be married in that church too. It was for the wedding of young friends of mine. I am that youthful creature, the professional student with neither spouse nor children, and most of my grad school friends are younger than I. It’s getting hard to keep up with them. I like to go to bed at 11 p.m.; they can stay up until 2 a.m. without turning a hair. But now even they are beginning to get married. This bride was the first of our set to go.
I do not usually like weddings. It distresses me that too often Christian churches are used as sets for theatrical weddings. The bride is the star, the groom is the best supporting actor and the guests are extras. For too many wedding guests, the Nuptial Mass is just something to get through: the dull bit between the bride’s procession and the party.
Wedding receptions have their own challenges. There is often a long interval between the wedding and the dinner, leaving guests with little to do. If a wedding guest is single, the wait gives him or her a long time to reflect on his or her single state, a state so recently and joyfully thrown off by the couple. Really, there is often nothing to do but drink, and so drink we do.
At dinner, if you are very lucky, you sit with interesting people and have good conversations. If you are not that lucky, at least there is dinner. Eating dinner gives you something to do until the speeches. The speeches are often long. They sometimes feature good-natured insults that tell you rather more than you wanted to know about the peccadilloes of the bride or groom.
But my dear young friends, whose love for Christ illuminates their lives, had a beautiful and holy wedding. During the rehearsal, I gazed around the old Toronto church, trying to imagine that Nuptial Mass 38-and-a-half years before. The new groom-to-be looked cheerful; the new bride-to-be looked solemn. The priest, a dear friend, was quite funny and reassuring. The mother of the bride added to her notes. Both families and all the wedding party showed a great reverence for the old church. I was glad because, for me, this church was sacred space in more ways than one. In that church, my Mum and Dad promised to accept me and all my brothers and sisters lovingly from God.
On the day of the wedding itself, I was moved again by the respect the wedding party and all the guests showed for the Mass. Everyone dressed appropriately; everyone paid attention; everyone prayed. In one interlude, the bride and groom walked together to a statue of the Pietà to pray. The bride left a bouquet of yellow roses for our Lady.
The bride was simply the most beautiful bride I had ever seen, and although her dress was formal and sweeping, it was modest. Seeing my friend dressed like that, I finally understood how a Christian marriage is a sign of the love of Christ for the church and of the church for Christ. Happy, solemn, loving and modest, my friend represented all of us, and I was proud that the church could be so beautiful.
I don’t mind being a single woman. Certainly it has its challenges and disappointments. But as the years go by, I become more and more reconciled to the idea that I may never follow in my mother’s footsteps to the altar of that old Toronto church. But when the Mass was over, there was one person with whom I most definitely would have changed places.
I turned to the mother-of-the-bride and squeezed her arm. “I so envy you your beautiful daughters,” I said.
Dorothy Cummings is a Toronto-based writer. She has an MA in English literature from the University of Toronto and an M.Div./STB from Regis College. She is currently on leave from doctoral studies in theology at Boston College.
Opinion 
(0 vote)
